Wavy Lines
by prepare4trouble
Summary: Most of the Ghost grew are de-aged into babies, and it falls to Kallus, Rex and Chopper to look after them until they grow up.


From a request on Tumblr:

 _"I wish you would write a fic where in a strange turn of events Ezra, Sabine, Hera, Kanan, and Zeb are deaged into one year olds (Kanan is still blind when deaged) and Chopper, Rex, and Kallus have to take care of them til they turn back while keeping their deaged state a secret from Rebel High Command."_

* * *

Hera was crying, and she wasn't sure why.

She was uncomfortable. Her clothes were too large suddenly, the wind blew through the oversized gaps in the sleeves. She felt clumsy and awkward, like her body wasn't her own. She was a little hungry, and for some reason that felt like the worst thing that had ever happened to her.

Tears ran down her face and sobs wracked her body, and the fact that she didn't know why she was crying only upset her more, only made her cry harder.

She forced open her eyes and looked around, the view blurred by tears, and what she saw made no sense. All around her, were babies; three human, and one that looked like it might be Lasat, which made no sense, because there were no Lasat babies, not outside of Lira S…

No!

Suddenly the wrong-ness began to connect into something that made a kind of sense.

Not only did that baby look a bit like Zeb, but the others… Apprehensively, she raised her hand to inspect it. It was wrong. Too small, too chubby.

She didn't look down, she didn't dare.

* * *

"I don't… I mean… how does a thing like this even happen? I'm not sure it's actually possible."

Rex stared at the former ISB agent incredulously. "If you're looking at it with your own two eyes, isn't that usually a pretty good indication that it happened?"

Kallus shook his head. "Not necessarily. Not when the thing I'm looking at is…" he indicated the five infants with a wave of his hand, "…that."

"Yeah, good point," Rex conceded. "This is… I can't look after babies!"

Kallus gave Rex a look. "Why not?" he asked. "People do it every day."

"Yeah, well most of those people aren't clones. I was made for battle. When I was their age, I was learning to reassemble a blaster rifle and marching in formation. I'm not the paternal type."

"And you think I am?" Kallus raised an eyebrow.

"Didn't say that, did I?"

Chopper emitted a series of irritated sounding noises very obviously aimed in their direction, then maneuvered himself to Hera's side and sat there, looking surprisingly menacing for a droid with no capacity for facial expressions.

Kallus looked at Rex. "Did he say what I think he said?"

Rex shrugged. "If you think he threw a bunch of insults our way, then probably. But to be honest, half of what he says is an insult, so it's usually a good guess."

"He's probably right though."

"That we should put our heads up…?"

"No! That we should do something. Standing around looking at them isn't going to help anything."

* * *

Something had happened, and Kanan was having a hard time working out what it was. Whatever it was, he didn't like it. He felt wrong, somehow, in a way that he couldn't quite put his finger on. "Everyone okay?" he asked. Only, he didn't; his mouth refused to make the correct shapes, and the sound that came out, although he knew it was him making it, was jumbled and confused, and unintelligible even to his own ears.

Confused, Kanan raised his hands to his face. Save for the familiar scar tissue around his eyes, the skin was completely smooth and unblemished. His beard was gone, his mask had fallen to the ground. He didn't understand, but he didn't like it.

Tears prickled, and he tried to push them back. He didn't cry, not over whatever this was. He needed to get control, he needed to find the others, make sure they were okay, and that the hadn't been affected. He reached out with the Force, trying to find Hera, and found it impossible. He could still feel the Force surrounding him, but for some reason he suddenly found himself unable to use it. He had not forgotten any of the lessons he had learned over the years, but he found himself unable to put them into practice.

He felt himself begin to panic at that revelation; a completely pointless reaction, but one that for some reason, he couldn't stop. The battle against the tears still threatening to fall was lost in that instant, and the sobs came, uncontrollable, unending. He gave up trying to stop himself, and gave himself over to it, it felt as though the world was ending, the worst, most horrible thing he could imagine was unfolding, and…

Arms closed around him. He felt himself being lifted, held against the hard surface of chest armor. A hand stroked his head soothingly, and as much as he knew he should hate it, it was strangely comforting.

Someone was talking. In the background, he could hear a wailing sound, like a baby crying. Another baby, he realized.

Suddenly, the whole thing clicked into place. It didn't make sense, because it was ridiculous, but he understood what had happened.

"He's not going to stop," said a voice. It was one that he vaguely recognized.

"He will. Just keep doing what you're doing."

That voice was closer, coming from the person holding him. It was more familiar still, but still he couldn't quite identify it. He opened his eyes to gaze up at the person holding him, and was met by a wall of nothing. He couldn't see.

He had known that. He shouldn't have been surprised by that. Still, he felt his lip begin to quiver again. He tried to make it stop, but all emotional control had failed him.

"Hey, shush, it's okay," the voice said again. The strong arms began to move him up and down in a rhythmic swaying motion, and suddenly nothing seemed so bad any more.

"Hey, you're a natural," said the first voice.

The second sighed, and jiggled Kanan a little harder. "Shut up," he said.

* * *

The scouting mission had gone well; the planet had appeared to be an ideal location for a new base, small, out of the way, capable of supporting life, abundant sources of water, even fertile land; in time, and with people who had the right skill-set, they might be able to grow crops. There were no shortage of displaced farmers in the Empire.

They should have known there was a reason why somebody hadn't taken it already.

"Why do you think they were affected and we weren't?" Kallus asked.

Rex shrugged, trying to fend off Ezra's attempt to escape from his grip until he had wiped a blue milk mustache from the baby's upper lip. "I don't know. But it's been a few hours now and nothing's happened to us, so it looks like we got away with it, whatever it was."

He placed Ezra on the floor, and the kid set off crawling, reached a chair and pulled himself to his feet before making his way unsteadily the rest of the way across the room.

Rex looked around. Kanan and Hera were sleeping side by side on a blanket he had put down on the floor. Zeb slept too, on the other side of the blanket, one arm curled underneath his head like a makeshift pillow.

Sabine was wide awake. She, like all of the de-aged crew, had cried like the world was ending at first, but unlike the others, she hadn't reached a state of exhaustion; she appeared to have recovered more quickly than the rest, had found a crayon, and was currently occupying herself with drawing on the floor and walls.

"Do you think we should stop her doing that?" Kallus asked. "I don't know everyone that well yet, but I'm certain Hera won't be happy about it when she's herself again."

Rex shook his head. "Try it if you want," he said. "But I can tell you what'll happen if you try to take that crayon away. She'll start crying, she'll wake the others up, and before you know it, you'll be dealing with five screaming babies again. But if that's what you want, go ahead."

Kallus shook his head. "I think it's fine. It should clean off."

* * *

It was the water; it had to be. The five of them had had a drink from a stream during their scouting mission, the others hadn't. Chopper had scanned it and declared it safe, but to be certain they had filtered the water through a purification filter before drinking it, and for maybe an hour afterward they had been fine. Still, it was the only explanation.

Sabine just hoped that if they didn't drink any more, they would go back to normal. She needed to communicate it to Rex and Kallus, to make sure that they didn't make the same mistake, but every attempt to communicate had been met with frustration.

She took a deep breath, and tried to force her lips to say the words, but what came out was an unintelligible collection of sounds, her infant mouth incapable for some reason of forming the words.

She picked up the crayon again, clutching it in her fist because it was too large, and her hand too awkward, to do anything else. She began to draw yet another wobbly, meaningless line on the floor. It wasn't right! She could see it in her head, she could see how the drawing was supposed to look, but when it came to actually putting it on paper — or, as it happened, on the floor — it just looked like nothing. Writing had been the same. Worse, even. The letters looked like nothing at all.

Her fingers gripped the crayon tightly, and she threw it hard across the room. Only, she didn't. Instead, she managed to toss it maybe a meter in slightly the wrong direction. It hit Ezra in the back of the head, and he turned, a shocked and hurt expression on his face.

"I'm sorry," Sabine tried to say, but what came out was more meaningless noise, and she finally gave in to the urge to cry.

Ezra picked up the crayon, got to his feet and waddled slowly toward her, walking like he was afraid he might fall over. When he reached her, he wrapped his arms as far around her as they would go, and squeezed as tightly as he could manage.

Oddly, it made her feel better.

* * *

"Do you think they know what's happening?" Rex asked. "Think they remember who they are and they just can't tell us?"

Kallus considered it, and it didn't make for a pleasant thought. He shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "I hope not, I don't imagine it would be very pleasant for them."

"If they know who they are, there's a chance we'll get them back," Rex said. "Even if they have to grow up again, they'll still have their memories. If not, they might grow into completely different people."

"They might anyway," Kallus said. He knelt down and carefully placed Ezra on the blanket next to the others. He opened his eyes for a moment, and looked around, but closed them again and fell instantly asleep. "Imagine growing up, going through puberty, surviving the process, only to find out you have to do the whole thing again."

At that, Sabine stopped drawing and turned to look at him, wide eyed. She had been drawing again, the same thing over and over, wavy lines with a blue crayon. It was obvious that it was supposed to represent something, and the crudeness of the drawing appeared to be down to fine motor control rather than lack of skill.

"I think they remember," Rex said.

Sabine frowned at him, then jabbed her pencil at the most recent set of lines she had drawn. "That," she said, and then smiled as though the word had been a pleasant surprise. "That," she said again. "That, that that!"

"Huh," Rex said. "Whatever 'that' is, it's obviously significant in some way. You didn't happen to see a bunch of wavy lines lying on the ground anywhere out there, did you?"

Sabine scowled at them each in turn. "That," she said again, then drew another almost identical line. She stared down at it, and then glared at her hand in frustration. Finally she yawned widely.

"I think you're tired," Rex said. "Want some milk before you go sleepies?"

"'Go sleepies'?" Kallus mimicked.

Rex shrugged.

* * *

Chopper examined Hera critically. She had grown by 5% in the past thirty minutes. Irritatingly, the two unaffected organics didn't seem to have noticed this. One of them had decided to leave the ship in an attempt to locate the cause of the de-aging, leaving the other to juggle babies.

He cast an eye over the other members of the crew; they were less important, but it was interesting to note that they, too had increased in size by a significant amount, much more than would be considered average in the timescales, for younglings of their particular species.

He had attempted to communicate this information to the human clone that had remained behind, however his grasp of Chopper's communication methods was rudimentary at best. It was irrelevant anyway, if growth continued at the current rate, even the organics couldn't fail to notice it in time.

While he waited for that to happen, he stuck close to Hera's side.

* * *

Hera watched as Sabine made yet another attempt to draw a stream in blue crayon on the wall of the Ghost. It wasn't going to work; if it hadn't worked the sixth time, it wasn't going to work the thirty-sixth. Still it was keeping her occupied, and it would continue to do so when they were themselves again, because she would be assigned to clean it up.

She placed her hand on the wall, in the same spot as she had earlier. She stretched the fingers wide apart and noted the distance between the end of her little finger and the edge of the control panel. It had shrunk significantly. There was no doubt about it, she was getting bigger.

Kanan was sitting in the corner of the room, his back pressed against two walls. His eyes were closed, but she could tell that he was awake. He had been quiet and subdued since this happened. Of course, none of them had been particularly talkative, but Kanan appeared to have retreated into himself. She worried about him.

He couldn't see — whatever had done this to them hadn't reversed any physical changes, they all still had their scars, Sabine's hair was still the color she had last dyed it. It seemed unfair, in a way, but at the same time she was grateful, she didn't want to have to watch him lose his sight again, she wasn't sure what a thing like that might do to him. Of course, she couldn't talk to him, couldn't tell him what was happening around him, or ask whether he had noticed the effects wearing off. If she was finding this difficult, it had to be that much worse for him.

She moved herself a little closer, leaned against one of the walls and reached for his hand. She squeezed it lightly, and he smiled.

Ezra was sitting on the middle of the room, watching Sabine as she drew yet another line on the floor. Hera watched her too. She watched as a second line joined it, more deftly than the first, somehow drawn at the right angle that, when joined another, and another, somehow began to take a form. It was still basic, nowhere near Sabine's usual standard, but Hera could see now what it was supposed to be. A river, or a stream, trees on either side, a steep bank leaving into slow moving water, grass on either side of the riverbank.

Sabine dropped the crayon and flexed her fingers as though they ached from the exertion, then looked at the picture with a scowl on her face; obviously it wasn't good enough for her.

Hera looked again. There was something familiar about the image. She had seen it before somewhere. She turned to Kanan to ask him, and remembered the two ways that it was impossible. She sighed, angry with herself.

Either sensing her frustration, or hearing it in her sigh, Kanan gripped her hand a little harder, then put an arm around her. Hera leaned against him, and turned her attention to Zeb. He was standing by the opposite wall, watching the scene in much the same way she was. She wondered whether he recognized the drawing.

* * *

Being a kid had been bad enough the first time; Zeb didn't want to go through it again, even if it did look like it was going to be at an accelerated rate. Especially if it was going to be at an accelerated rate.

He moved to the other side of the room and climbed easily up onto his favorite chair. He was definitely taller than he had been before his nap. Exactly how much taller, he wasn't sure. He was stronger too, he could feel his muscles waking up and, like any young Lasat, he ached to use them. He looked around the room, searching for something else to climb. The table looked promising, but not high enough to pose any kind of a challenge. He leaped up there anyway, then searched for his next target.

* * *

"Anything?"

Kallus shook his head. The trip outside had been fruitless, as he had known it would be. He was still none the wiser about the cause of the de-aging. He looked at the babies. Hera and Kanan were slumped in the corner, fast asleep, while Sabine and Ezra had finally fallen asleep too, on the hard floor, Sabine still clutching her blue crayon. Near her head was a passable representation of a stream he had passed on his walk.

He gently picked them up one at a time and placed them on the slightly more comfortable blanket they had put down. He wished he could have given the babies their own beds, but he wasn't sure they wouldn't fall out, and it would have been impossible to look after all of them in separate quarters.

"Are they getting bigger?" he asked in a hushed tone, so as not to wake them.

Rex surveyed the scene. "I think they might be," he said.

When he had left, he would have put them at around one standard year. Now, he might have said two. They had graduated from babies to toddlers in the time it had taken him to go for a short walk.

He sat down, just as Zeb leapt halfway across the room and landed on his hands. "Should he be doing that?" he asked.

"Don't see why not," Rex told him. "He seems to know what he's doing."

Kallus shrugged. "They should be able to talk soon," he said.

Rex smiled. "Hera started saying real words about half an hour ago."

"And you thought you weren't the paternal type." Kallus smirked. "But what I meant was that they might be able to tell us what happened."

"Already did," Rex told him. He pointed a finger at Sabine's drawing. "They drank the water, remember? From a stream that looked a bit like that."

Kallus went pale.

"I guess that explains why nobody lives here," Rex continued. "Anybody that tried it probably found themselves in this kind of a situation." He laughed. "I figure if they keep growing at their current rate, they'll be themselves again in a day or so. In the meantime, ship's water only. I'm going to work on the assumption that they'll stop aging when they reach their original age, because the alternative's unthinkable." He frowned, noticing Kallus' reaction. "What's up with you?"

Kallus shook his head. "Nothing."

"Tell me you didn't drink the water."

Kallus shook his head. "I didn't." He hesitated. "But I did find some meilooruns growing not far from the stream. Must've been planted by some of those people that abandoned the place."

Rex stared at him. "You didn't..?"

"It might just be the water," Kallus said. "They might not be affected."

"And where do you think the juice in those meilooruns comes from?"

Kallus sighed. He nodded at the kids, pleased to see they appeared to have grown a little older still. "How long did it take to affect them?"

"About an hour. I can't believe you've done this to me. I'm going to be all alone, looking after six babies!"

Chopper made an indignant sound.

"So," Kallus said. He got up from his chair and sat on the ground. "If it's going to happen, I have about ten minutes, I'm going to sit down here so I don't fall off my chair." He grimaced, and looked at the five toddlers, not eager join them. Zeb had stopped his gymnastic display, and moved a little closer, to listen in on the conversation. He was wearing a solemn expression, and reached out to pat Kallus' foot supportively. Kallus sighed. "I'm never going to live this down, am I?"

Rex grinned widely. "None of you are. I don't know if you knew this, but Chopper records everything he sees. You can guarantee this is going to be one of the ones he stores forever."


End file.
